Lessig Joins the Microsoft PR Machine
Larry Lessig, Red Herring: Anti-trusting Microsoft.
First, Steven Levy (who wrote a Lessig profile in Wired this month) and now Larry Lessig, have somehow been duped into touting Palladium as a Good Thing For You. It's unclear whether Microsoft has paid Lessig off or brainwashed him, but either way the result is unbelievable.
In his column, Lessig suggests that Palladium isn't an anti-trust move, that it useful for anyone who sends confidential emails, better than government-imposed DRM (like it's even an either-or question!), supportive of peer-to-peer systems, and "less damaging to innovation".
Perhaps Lessig has been fighting the government for so long that he's become a full-blown Microsoft-cheering libertarian, or maybe he's afraid of being seen as a one-political-view wonder, but I sure miss the hard-working lawyer who took Microsoft head-on in the antitrust case. Is Lessig going to write articles in support of "Software [Lack of] Choice" and "Freedom to [Not] Innovate" next?
The classic Lessig-brand pessimism is nowhere to be found (except for a small comment that antitrust worries "are valid concerns." As most of you probably know, Palladium will effectively mean that Microsoft, and not us, will run our computers. Its downsides are far too many to list here and I've not heard one decent use of it yet! Perhaps it is better than no computers, or some sort of super-restrictive DRM, but did Lessig give up the fight to prevent DRM so soon? What happened, Larry? We need your support for the many difficult battles to come.
Posted by Aaron Swartz at September 14, 2002 09:31 PM in Technology